What you need to know on Wall Street today
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A new exchange-traded fund from Goldman Sachs' asset management arm is fueling a Wall Street price war that could hurt the industry.
The new "smart-beta" product, which tracks an equal weight index of roughly 500 large cap equities, was announced Thursday. It will trade under the ticker GSEW and has an expense ratio of 0.09%. Most smart-beta products, like GSEW, have an expense ratio between 0.24% and 0.39%, according to Moody's.
"The ETF price war beyond vanilla ETFs is credit negative for traditional active equity players entering the smart-beta realm," Moody's analyst Stephen Tu said.
In other Wall Street news, Morgan Stanley is using Snapchat to recruit the next generation of bankers. Startup lending company SoFi says a critical report in The New York Times "reflects a lack of understanding of our business." The FTC says it's investigating the Equifax hack.
And in an op-ed for Business Insider, JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon said that businesses "must lead by example." He said:
"The private sector has to step up and work with government and community leaders to offer solutions. We must use the best of our businesses - financial and human capital, data, and partnerships - to help more people share in the country's economic prosperity."
JPMorgan's global head of quantitative strategy has joined his boss in the growing legion of anti-cryptocurrency crusaders. In a client note on Wednesday, Marko Kolanovic said cryptocurrencies as a whole had "some parallels to fraudulent pyramid schemes."
The comments came a day after Dimon called bitcoin a "fraud" that was "worse than tulip bulbs." He even went as far as to say he'd fire any trader that transacted it for being stupid. Meanwhile, bitcoin is tumbling after Chinese regulators said an exchange ban is certain.
In related news, the former CIO of UBS has joined the non-profit behind IOTA, the ninth largest cryptocurrency.
In markets news, the stock market's secret weapon may be vanishing, and crude oil hit $50 for the first time in five weeks.
In deal news, Nestlé is spending up to $500 million to buy a majority stake in trendy coffee chain Blue Bottle. Saudi Aramco's initial public offering may be pushed back. President Trump barred a Chinese-backed private equity firm from buying US chipmaker Lattice Semiconductor. And Amazon is throwing a pile of cash at Whole Foods to turn a profit, according to UBS.
Lastly, here's how much income you have to earn to be considered middle class in every US state.
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